Lost and Found Photos

Review of the Robert E. Jackson snapshot show

Robert E. Jackson's collection is / was an amazing exhibit and book. Here is a review (Paul Richard, Taken in a Flash, but Taken in More Slowly) for the National Gallery show.  Richard asks quite a few questions. . . I especially like this quote:

"This culled and curious show engrosses. The more you see its snapshots, the more you make your peace with the elusive, compound ghost who brought us these pictures: It isn't just one being, it's everyone who's ever stopped to snap a picture, and all the lessons taught by the movies and Life magazine. It's the collector and the curator and all of us together, all of us at once."

Lost-and-found photos from tornado

Family finds photo lost during tornado
"Guffey scanned the photo on her computer, printed it on a flyer and took it to the Gassville area. When no one recognized the photo, she sent copies of the photo to several newspapers in an attempt to return it to the family."

Precious photos lost, found and returned to sender

Precious photos lost, found and returned to sender
Article from the Miami Herald. Read it HERE. Quote below from article.

"The light blue photo album filled with irreplaceable black-and-white memories of a 1930s childhood spent in Coral Gables was strewn on the floor of a Postal Service sorting facility in Pembroke Pines.

No return address. No hint of its destination. Puzzled postal clerks only had pictures and captions as clues." 

WWII bag found

A Flickr member posted a link to this video on a message board. I can not find that message now. Just wanted to give credit. . . but I can't find that message now. Ahhh.

Floods sweeping away homes

HERE is a story from MSNBC.  The Fromm family lost their home to the flood waters.  Here is a quote from the story.  There are many more stories like this. . .

“Everything that we have is gone,” Tim Fromm told TODAY co-host Matt Lauer Wednesday. “You can replace furniture and TVs and everything else. [But] it’s the memories. We have no pictures of our younger daughters anymore. We had binders and binders and books of all the kids growing up.”

Coming Home: Dateline story

Dateline featured THIS story last week.  Vietnam War: American soldier picks up a photograph of a little girl from the pocket of the Vietnam soldier he shot and killed.  Coming Home tells the story of that photograph. They have the entire transcript on their website.  Here is a quote from the transcript.

"I seen this picture sticking out partially out. It looked like (closes eyes) the face of a little girl with some long hair or something. And I pulled it out and it was real tiny. And it was a picture of a soldier and a little girl. I can remember holding the photo and actually squatting and getting close to the soldier and actually looking in his face and looking at the photo, and looking at his face.

Here was the man he had just killed. But who was that little girl? His daughter?

They seemed so serious. So, sad, somehow. Like the picture was taken just before they said goodbye. Before her father went off to war."

Stolen Wallet Story

My dissertation adviser sent me the article above last year.  You can read about the missing wallet HERE.  "There was no money in the wallet, but it contained Val's Navy ID, a copy of his Augusta birth certificate and more than a dozen photos."

Singular Photos by Greg Williams

Singular Photos, originally uploaded by wikiworldcomic.

Greg Williams of the Tampa Tribune has created his own lost and found project.  Read his article HERE. 

Greg found people who only possessed one photograph of an acquaintance.  Read their stories by clicking on the names below.

John
Susan
J.T.
Lyda
Wong
Boroch

Greg mentions my project in the article.  He also writes of my grandmother's story which is on the left side of the screen along with the other stories called in.  Here it is if you haven't heard it.

My grandmother was my first caller.  I was testing the whole voice mail system and knew my grandmother had a story. I asked her to call it in. She did.  What was important about her telling (besides the story) is that when I heard it, I felt that she wasn't telling me the story. . . She was telling it to a much larger audience. That was important. I wanted the calls to be for visitors of the site. . . not for me.  I also believe (as many have written about) that telling stories and having them heard is a positive experience for many.  I know that it has been for my grandmother.

One of the tricky (yet important) things about this project is the anonymous nature of the recordings on this site.  There are no names. Just stories. I will be writing more about this in the future.